What is wrong with antievolutionist arguments via quotations?

"This is not to imply that we know everything that can and should be known
about biology and about evolution. Any competent biologist is aware of a
multitude of problems yet unresolved and of questions yet unanswered. After
all, biologic research shows no sign of approaching completion; quite the
opposite is true. Disagreements and clashes of opinion are rife among
biologists, as they should be in a living and growing science.
Antievolutionists mistake, or pretend to mistake, these disagreements as
indications of dubiousness of the entire doctrine of evolution. Their favorite
sport is stringing together quotations, carefully and sometimes expertly taken
out of context, to show that nothing is really established or agreed upon
among evolutionists. Some of my colleagues and myself have been amused and
amazed to read ourselves quoted in a way showing that we are really
antievolutionists under the skin."

ne
of the favorite tactics of evolution deniers and other
pseudoscientists is to use numerous quotations
to make their case. For many people the use of
quote after quote makes a very persuasive argument.
However, the antievolutionist
use of quotes is invalid and does not in any way provide
evidence for creationism or against evolution. The reasons
for this
fall into several major categories: the use of quotations often
is a fallacy of "argument from authority,"
selective quotation may be occurring,
the quotations are
often out-of-date, the quoted authorities are often not
appropriate authorities, evolution deniers are sometimes not
honest in representing who the people they quote are,
and many of the quotations are misquotations.

The fallacy of the argument from authority

When someone -- no matter
what kinds of degrees, qualifications, prestige, or honors
he has -- is quoted to support a proposition, it does
not imply that the proposition is true.
To imply otherwise is a common fallacy
called the "argument from authority."
What should matter
is not who agrees with one of your points but rather
what evidence you can provide that supports it.

A scientific argument is not like
an elementary school book that says "authoritatively"
that Albany is the capital of New York, nor is it
a high school or college textbook that functions to
summarize current theory and practice of a field.
The works of antievolutionists are not merely trying to
summarize existing mainstream scientific
knowledge, but are rather trying to argue that
large parts of it are completely wrong. The
young-earth creationists in particular are arguing that most
of mainstream science is wrong. A few of them
propose
that is it very close to all being
wrong,
including most of physics and chemistry.
Can one really accomplish a complete overturning of mainstream
scientific thinking and establish creationism as scientific
knowledge with a list of quotes?
The idea is naïve at best.

Some evolution deniers
will undoubtedly state that
the overwhelming support of evolution by qualified scientists
does not by itself prove evolution. They are correct in saying this. Most
scientists do not just assert that evolution is correct,
but rather provide overwhelming
evidence from many fields. If antievolutionists want to say that they
are
opposed to the "argument from authority," they cannot reject
its use for evolution while simultaneously using it to make
their own points.
For example,
if a paleontologist argues that something is a transitional fossil
and points to various features of the fossil as evidence, then
merely quoting some other authority saying it is not transitional
is not an
adequate response. The evolution denier must point to specific
evidence to argue that it is not transitional.

Sometimes there is need of some sort of authority. Most people
couldn't make heads or tails out of a fossil since they lack
the knowledge and practical hands-on experience that a
professional paleontologist has, just as a paleontologist
probably could not make sense of the accounting books of a
large multi-national corporation. There is nothing
wrong with going to appropriate experts when the
need arises. However, when one uses an authority, it is
of vital importance that one not merely quote that authority's
opinion. It is not merely the authority's opinion that should
be used, but rather the authority's evidence, interpretations
of evidence, and lines of reasoning that should be used. Furthermore,
one cannot ignore the evidence and lines of reasoning of authorities
with different views.
In science it is the
evidence, and not who says it, that should count. If
quotes are to be used at all, they should used in an argument
and not as an argument.

Real scientific argumentation only rarely involves the use
of quotes as anyone who has ever looked at scientific papers or
publications knows. When an argument is based on evidence
there is little need for frequent quotations. Citations and references in
technical papers tend to be for things like where data came from,
where an idea was proposed, where methodology was described, where a line
of argumentation was made, where a fossil was formally described,
and other things along those lines. If the reader doubts that
papers only rarely use quotes or wants to see for themselves how
how scientists use the work of other scientists there is a simple
solution.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United
States of America
(PNAS) is one of the top scientific journals in the world covering
virtually the entire breadth of scientific inquiry today. PNAS has
its entire contents from 1990 to 2001 available online for free
without any need of registration with later issues becoming free after six
months. See the contents of the
January 2, 2001 issue. The scientific
papers begin after the commentaries and perspectives.
The issue was chosen because it is, at the time that this paragraph
was being written, the
"free sample issue" linked from the home page, lest
anyone think that the issue was hand-picked for this
article. You can examine other issues
by clicking the arrows by "other issues."

Evolution deniers often use selective quotations

"The Discovery Institute has used unauthorized, selective quotations from my
book In Search of Deep Time to support their outdated, mistaken views."

Picking and choosing authorities

In advertisements for movies, it is usually
taken for granted that the studios only quote positive
reviews. This kind of Madison Avenue tactic is not
a legitimate means of establishing the nature of reality.
One cannot just pick the expert whose opinion is
convenient for the point one is trying to make while
ignoring credible expert opinion to the contrary.
This is especially the case when the quoted authority
is in the minority among his fellow experts. There might be
a very good reason why the authority's views are in the
minority. If a writer argues by hand-picking only the
experts convenient to him, then that writer has committed
the "argument from authority" fallacy. Antievolutionists
do this routinely.

Alan Feduccia
who opposes the idea that
birds are descended from dinosaurs and instead argues that
birds are descended from non-dinosaur
archosaurs
(a taxon that includes dinosaurs) is often
quoted by
evolution deniers.
Feduccia is a qualified scientist and should not be just dismissed,
but his views are in an extreme minority within the scientific
community.
It is simply bad reasoning for the evolution deniers to
use Feduccia's writing disagreeing with conventional ideas of bird
evolution while ignoring the many experts that
disagree with him.

Was Archaeopteryx a feathered dinosaur? Dr. Alan Feduccia,
a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
and an evolutionist himself, said: "Paleontologists have tried to turn
Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it's not.
It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of 'paleobabble' is going to
change that."

Notice the
author is citing Feduccia's conclusion, and not his evidence. There
is no mention that that his opinion is a minority opinion. Feduccia's
peers in the field of bird evolution are "authorities" too.
In short this creationist is saying that Feduccia is an authority and
that he says that birds are not descended from dinosaurs, therefore
birds are not descended from dinosaurs. It is a classic "argument from
authority." It is also very inconsistent.
Feduccia also says that evolution occurs, so if this argument is to
be followed to its logical conclusion, this creationist must
accept the evolution of birds from non-birds! One could also
cite many more authorities that say birds are descended from
theropod dinosaurs. This is why one should not pick and choose
authorities. If Feduccia does turn out to be correct and his views become
established within the scientific community, then the evolution deniers
will probably become fond of quoting what
Kevin Padian and other proponents of birds being descended from
dinosaurs had to say about Feduccia's views.

"Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating
to be quoted again and again by creationists--whether through design or
stupidity, I do not know--as admitting that the fossil record includes no
transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species
level, but they are abundant between larger groups. Yet a pamphlet entitled
'Harvard Scientists Agree Evolution Is a Hoax' states: 'The facts of punctuated
equilibrium which Gould and Eldredge...are forcing Darwinists to swallow fit the
picture that Bryan insisted on, and which God has revealed to us in the Bible.'"

When one uses an individual authority, one cannot pick and choose
his relevant opinions either. If an authority's opinion is credible
when he agrees with you then that authority does not become any less of
an authority when he disagrees with you. You can disagree with your
authority and give the reasons why, but you cannot simply ignore
or dismiss him when you don't like what he has to say.

The
above creationist not only did not
quote the experts with other views than Feduccia, the creationist
did not mention the views of Feduccia that are contrary to his own case.
Consider that the antievolutionist article quoted above is called
"Is Archaeopteryx a 'missing link'?"
and argues that Archaeopteryx is not a transitional
form. It uses the Feduccia quote to support this. A reader
might be fooled into thinking that Feduccia does not think that
it is not a
transitional form between reptiles and birds. Here is what
Feduccia2 had to say in a chapter
he called
"Feathered Reptiles":

...The creature thus memorialized was Archaeopteryx
lithographica, and, though indisputably birdlike, it
could with equal truth be called reptilian....
The Archaeopteryx fossil is, in fact, the most superb
example of a specimen perfectly intermediate between two
higher groups of living organisms--what has come to be called
a "missing link," a Rosetta stone of evolution....

In all fairness to the antievolutionist, this was probably not a
deliberate attempt at deception. Selective quotations
can be the result of poor scholarship. His citation
reveals that he got the quote from a news item in the journal
Science and not from Feduccia's own writings. This is not
saying that one cannot quote news articles, but only that it is
not a substitute for finding out what the expert actually
thinks from his own writings. If you want to use someone's
opinion, it is your responsibility to find out what his opinion
really is.

Thus from one quote we see a whole range of problems that
resulted from an attempt to "prove" a point with a quotation.
The moral is that quoting someone is not a substitute
for researching details and providing details to the
reader. Without those details, it is simply saying
that it is so because so-and-so said so. Without those
details it becomes an "argument from authority."

That
evolution deniers have to resort to quotes to make their case shows
just how little of a case they have.

Evolution deniers often use out-of-date quotes

One must ask whether a quote reflects current
knowledge or whether it is out-of-date.
Antievolutionists often use
quotations that are decades old. A lot of progress
has happened in the last several decades. What the quoted
person thought was an unsolved problem may have been solved.
What the quoted person said has little evidence might now
have lots of evidence.

Why-the-bible.com's
anthropology
page3
quotes
Richard Leakey
as concluding that the
australopithecines were not bipedal (walking with
two legs) as those who study human evolution
almost always claim. But what the evolution deniers
do not mention is that Leakey changed his opinion with
the discovery of more fossils (including
"Lucy")
that helped demonstrate that his earlier opinion
was wrong. Thus this quote is nearly three decades
out-of-date and is simply worthless as evidence against
modern notions of human evolution. Leakey's views
on this matter are also
addressed in the
Fossil Hominids: Response to In the Beginning FAQ.

Evolution deniers often use quotes from inappropriate
"authorities"

The person being quoted might not be
competent or even knowledgeable about the subject he is
being quoted on. Antievolutionists often quote non-biologists,
who have little knowledge about the field of evolution, as if they
were "authorities" in the field.
If the reader would be unimpressed by a biologist's opinion
of astronomical issues, then he should be equally unimpressed
by an astronomer's opinion of biological issues.
Chemists, physicists, mathematicians,
or astronomers are almost always laymen when
they discuss biology.

Of course there is nothing
wrong with a layman making a scientific case
so long as he argues substantively and is not
presented as an
"authority" in biology or evolution.

Evolution deniers also
often quote one person and then another
in a mix-or-match fashion with little regard to
whether the persons being quoted represent a mainstream
scientific viewpoint,
a minority scientific viewpoint, or are considered to be cranks.

Evolution deniers are not always honest in representing the identity
of the people they quote

The people the antievolutionists quote are not always who the
antievolutionists say they are.

Another
example is the prominent evolution denier that goes by the
pseudonym
"John Woodmorappe"
whose real
name is Jan Peczkis. This is easily documented by
the fact that Woodmorappe's address listed in an article of his in the
Creation Research Society Quarterly
is identical to
the listing for Jan Peczkis, that
Peczkis has the same geology degree as Woodmorappe,
and that Woodmorappe claims to be a teacher
while Peczkis is a teacher. The
claim that the two are the same person has been in
print since 1991 though one talk.origins
poster
reports
that Peczkis threatened him with legal action for making this claim online.
Why bring this up and why would anyone care who Woodmorappe really is?
Because in an
online article
Woodmorappe5
quotes a Peczkis article from the Science Teacher without any
mention that they are the same person. Writing something under one name so
that it can be quoted and given positive notice using a different name is not
honest. It is also worth mentioning that Woodmorappe/Peczkis has a well-deserved
reputation for
dishonest quoting as well as for
name calling and has used some fairly
incompetent arguments.

Of course, like everyone else, a scientist may sometimes say dumb things or
be careless with his
wordings. Also be careful of statements by authorities
that might be exaggerations or self-promotion. Statements
in the press that a new discovery changes everything
that we thought we knew about something are frequently
exaggerations or self-promotion.

Thus even without the use of
misquotations, one can "prove" pretty much anything
by the use of quotations. Argumentation via quote after quote
is dubious at best for deciding scientific disputes. This is
one reason why scientific papers only rarely use quotes to
make their case.

Evolution deniers often misquote people

"It does not surprise me that I am being misquoted because, after all,
this is practically the only defense creationists have."

Antievolutionists have consistently used misquotations. This document
will give some of the many examples.

Why misquotes happen

There are many reasons why misquotations occur.

Some misquotations
are honest mistakes. It would be hard not to make some
misquotations when one's argumentation consists largely
of quotations, as is the case for many antievolutionary works.
What makes this problem worse in antievolutionist literature is
that many creationist writers do not actually read what they
are quoting in the original but copy it from another
writer, usually (but not necessarily) another evolution denier
who himself might have copied it from yet another antievolutionist.
This is often revealed by multiple evolution deniers having
the same error in the quote or citation. Thus if a single
evolution denier is dishonest, sloppy, or incompetent in his quotation
then the error becomes widespread. Antievolutionists (and for that matter
anyone else) can help avoid this by checking any quote in the
original if at all possible. If a quoter has not read the
original work he should not cite the original as if he did
but rather
indicate in his citation that the quote was taken from
a secondary source.

Another source of misquotation by antievolutionists is how they
use quotations and the scientific literature. Daisie and
Michael Radner in their Science and Unreason explain
this rather well. One of the things they include as
"marks of pseudoscience" is
"Research by Exegesis." They elucidate:
6

In literary art or in religion, the field of study is the
totality of existing writings. Any piece by Shakespeare or
any part of a sacred book is fair game for interpretation.
The scientist does not approach the literature of his or her
field in the same way. Only the historian of science is
concerned with the whole body of scientific writings. For
the practicing scientist, written reports merely serve to
communicate the results of research -- data collected,
theories proposed, arguments and counterarguments. Insofar
as a piece of scientific writing fails to communicate well or
to argue cogently, it is ineffective. Such work is largely
ignored in the scientific discipline.

Pseudoscientists often reveal themselves by their handling
of the scientific literature. Their idea of doing scientific
research is simply to read the scientific periodicals and
monographs. They focus on the words, not on the
underlying facts and reasoning. They take science to be
all statements by scientists. Science degenerates into
a secular substitute for sacred literature. Any statement
by any scientist can be cited against any other statement.
Every statement counts and every statement is open to
interpretation.

Finally, an evolution denier may indeed not be quoting honestly.
Many cases of misquotations by antievolutionists are so
blatant and obvious when compared to the original that it
is hard to imagine that the original quoter was not being
intentionally dishonest. The quotes by Keith Davies
from the astronomical literature of supernova remnants
that are discussed below are examples of quotes that many
find hard to accept as anything other than the result of
deliberate deception.

Types of misquotation

"When I first encountered his
[Jonathan Wells]
attempts at journalism, I thought he might
be a woefully deficient scholar because his critiques about peppered moth
research were full of errors, but soon it became clear that he was
intentionally distorting the literature in my field. He lavishly dresses
his essays in quotations from experts (including some from me) which are
generally taken out of context, and he systematically omits relevant details
to make our conclusions seem ill founded, flawed, or fraudulent."

FAMOUS EVOLUTIONIST OF THE MONTH QUOTE:
"Paleontologists cannot operate this way. There is simply no way simply to
look at a fossil and say how old it is unless you know the age of the rocks
it comes from. And this poses something of a problem: if we date the rocks by
their fossils, how can we then turn around and talk about the patterns of
evolutionary time in the fossil record?" -Niles Eldredge in "Time Frames:
The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated
Equilibria", pp. 51, 52, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985)

When one looks at what Eldredge8 wrote,
there is a huge omission that is not marked by ellipses.
The first two quoted sentences start one paragraph in the original,
while "And this poses something of a problem..." is in the middle of
the next paragraph. Here is the first paragraph with what the creationist
newsletter quoted in green:

Paleontologists cannot operate this way. There is simply no way simply to
look at a fossil and say how old it is unless you know the age of the rocks
it comes from.
Sometimes igneous rocks, rocks we can date chemically, intrude into
sedimentary rocks, and in such a fashion some hard-core "absolute"
dates--expressed in terms of millions of years--are available for all
subdivisions of geologic time....

Radiometric dating usually cannot be used on the layers of sedimentary rocks with
fossils, but rather is employed on volcanic layers above and/or below
the fossiliferous rocks. If the fossil is in between two datable
volcanic tuffs, its date will be dated to being in between the dates of the
tuffs. In the work that Eldredge was doing there was often no
volcanic layer since he was doing work on isolated outcrops, roadcuts, etc.
So how could he tell time?
Skipping to the next paragraph Eldredge continues:

But none of that helps in a cow pasture in upstate New York.
Long before radioactivity was known to physicists, paleontologists had
another way to tell time. Fossils occur in the same vertical sequence
thoughout the geologic column. The same, or closely similar fossils
frequently occur in many far-flung localities; some are even found worldwide.
This repetitive pattern of occurrence allows geological minded paleontologists
to correlate: rocks are mapped, and frequently certain distinctive horizons,
such as volcanic ashfalls, can be traced over great distances. But rocks in
isolated quarries can be matched up according to the nature of the fossils
they contain.
And this poses something of a problem: if we date the rocks by
their fossils, how can we then turn around and talk about the patterns of
evolutionary time in the fossil record?
...

DARWIN'S BIGGEST PROBLEM, "...innumerable transitional forms must have
existed but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the
crust of the earth? ...why is not every geological formation and every
stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal
any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest
objection which can be urged against my theory". Origin of the Species
[sic].

The first part being quoted is in
chapter 6
and the second part is in
chapter 9
of
The Origin of Species.
The ellipses are used to
ignore
Darwin's answer to the problem. Ellipses should, in any event, never be
used to skip whole chapters of material. And do not forget the
previous discussion of out-of-date quotes since Darwin died twelve
decades ago.

Even if the words
are quoted accurately, this does not guarantee that it is
not a misquotation.

In one example below, young-earth creationists
quote a rhetorical question and do not tell their
readers that it was rhetorical.

Putting text in brackets to make clear to the reader what the
quoted material means or to note changes made to the text
can be part of proper quoting. However sometimes the use
of brackets can result in giving readers a false impression
of the meaning or content of the quoted material.
An example of this is documented
in
"Doubting Darwinism through Creative License."

Another way of misquotation
is the result of the readers of the quoter and the readers of the
quoted having different vocabularies, making different
assumptions, and interpreting things in different ways.
In science, words are often used in different ways
than what they would mean to a general
audience. And of course a word might mean different things in
a different field or can mean different things depending on
the context. If an evolution denier's readers don't realize
this then they are vulnerable to being fooled by a misquotation.

Many evolution deniers quote
Stephen Jay Gould and other
punctuated equilibria
proponents as saying that transitional forms are
very rare. Most non-specialists get ideas of "missing
links" between higher taxa of animals when they hear
about transitional forms. Gould has been very clear that
these are common and yet he has been quoted many times that
transitional forms are rare. What is going on here? In
the context of punctuated equilibria, a transitional form
is between immediately related species (say two species of
squirrels, species of similar Devonian trilobites, etc.),
and is not referring to a transition between human and
non-human,
whales and primitive land mammals, etc. Indeed the transitions
Gould and other punctuated equilibria proponents are arguing
about would be generally be dismissed as
"microevolution" by many evolution deniers. Thus
antievolutionists arguing against the existence of transitions between
larger taxa are very likely guilty of misquotation
if they quote Gould's writings on punctuated equilibria.
For more details on this see
Gould's10
classic essay
"Evolution as Fact and Theory" where he explains
his position on the fossil record as well as demonstrates
young-earth creationist misrepresentations of his views.

Another case of a
word that different people use differently is
"Darwinism."
Some authors use that term very broadly and some use it
in an extremely narrow sense.

Most laymen do not understand that the word "theory" means
a very
different thing in science than it does in
the vernacular.

Some biologists have described this [the Cambrian explosion]
in terms of "bottom-up" versus "top-down" evolution. Darwinian
evolution is "bottom-up," referring to its prediction that lower
levels in the biological hierarchy should emerge before higher
ones. But the Cambrian explosion shows the opposite. In the
words of Valentine and his colleagues, the Cambrian pattern
"creates the impression that [animal] evolution has by and
large proceeded from the 'top down'." [First bracket is mine and
the second is by Wells.]

Since Wells is saying that evolution predicts the exact opposite
of what it actually does it might seem puzzling that Wells could find
a quote to support his claim. That is until a visit to the library stacks
reveals a problem with the context. Notice that Wells is saying that
"top-down" means that the higher Linnean hierarchies like phyla
and classes appear before lower Linnean hierarchies like orders and
families. This is actually something that must be true if
evolution is true. But that is not how the term was used by the
authors that Wells quoted as is clear if one reads the sentence
before the quoted material. Here is what a bit more of what
Valentine et al.12
had to say on the Cambrian explosion with what Wells
quoted in green:

In general, for those taxonomic levels for which fossil data
seems adequate, higher levels reached their peak diversities
earlier, and successively lower levels progressively later,
in geologic time (Valentine, 1969). This pattern
creates the impression that metazoan evolution has by and
large proceeded from the "top down,"
that the body plans of the phyla originated presumably as
adaptations that permitted the occupation of major adaptive
zones, and then, according to the potentials and constraints
provided and imposed by the body plans, they in turn branched
to produce the major modifications that are ranked as classes,
and so on to the ordinal [order] level and below....

There is a great deal of difference between "emerge"
or "appear first" (a phrase Wells used in his next paragraph)
and
"reached their peak diversity." Quoting someone and not
informing the reader that the key term was used in the original in
a completely different manner forms a
misquotation.
For those interested learning about some of the many
distortions Dr. Wells is guilty of might look at the
Icons of Evolution FAQs.

In general, any quote whose impact depends on what the reader
does not know is probably out-of-context.

More Specific examples of out-of-context quotes by antievolutionists

"So it goes. One scientist after another receives the Creationist
treatment. Any qualifying comment, any deviation from orthodoxy
is a potential target. Ripped from its context, it can be made
to serve the Creationists' purpose, namely, to convince the
uninitiated that Creationist theses are sometimes advanced by
scientists in scientific debates. But anyone can play the
same game. In conclusion, I cannot resist turning the weapon
against the Creationist who has used it to its greatest
effect. Referring to the controversy about transitional forms,
Gish
writes, 'There should be no room for question, no possibility
of doubt, no opportunity for debate, no rationale whatsoever for
the existence of the Institute for Creation Research'
(Gish 1981, ii).
How true."

Classic example from The Genesis Flood

A classic example of an antievolutionist misquotation
comes from The Genesis Flood
by John C. Whitcomb and
Henry M. Morris.14
This book is
arguably the most influential young-earth creationist
book in the latter half of the twentieth century. They
quote C. P. Ross and Richard
Rezak.15
The
green
text below is quoted by Whitcomb and Morris and black text is what
they did not quote.
The context of the quote is the young-earthers trying to debunk
the existence of the
Lewis overthrust
by claiming some
disturbed strata were little disturbed or undisturbed.
Ross and Rezak wrote:

Folds that originated at the time represented by plate 53B but that
have been accentuated and locally broken by the later pressures, are
visible in ridges, cliffs, and canyon walls both in the mountains south
of Glacier National Park and in the part of the Great Plains within some
20 miles of the mountain edge at the eastern border of the park. All the
sedimentary rocks that were present were squeezed and folded, but the Belt
series, being strong and buried under a blanket of other rocks, was deformed
the least.
Most visitors, especially those who stay on the roads, get
the impression that the Belt of strata are undisturbed
and lie almost as flat today as they did when deposited in the sea
which vanished so many
million
years ago.
Actually they are folded, and in certain zones they are intensely
so. From points on and near the trails in the park
it is possible to observe places where the beds of the Belt series,
as revealed in outcrops on ridges, cliffs, and
canyon walls, are folded and crumpled almost as intricately as the
soft younger strata in the mountains south of the
park and in the Great Plains adjoining the park to the east.

Davies and Sarfati on supernova remnants

As the evolutionist astronomers Clark and Caswell say,
'Why have the large number of expected remnants not been
detected?' and these authors refer to
'The mystery of the missing remnants'.

Both of them give the impression that astronomers cannot
explain the number of observed supernova remnants assuming an old
universe. The Clark and Caswell
paper
is online. Both quotes are on
page 301.
As the reader can easily verify, "Why have the large number of expected
remnants not been detected?" is a rhetorical question. And
"The mystery of the missing remnants" is followed by
"is also solved."

Davies
also misquotes the astronomer Donald P. Cox.
Cox's
article
is also online and the reader can check the
page
where the quote was taken. What Davies quotes is
in green and what he did not quote will be left
in black:

The final example is the SNR population of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The observations
(many collected in Mathewson et al. 1983)
have caused considerable surprise and loss of confidence
in simple models such as those in this paper.

Concluding thoughts

Brian and Sandra Alters18
give some good advice for classroom instructors that
is just plain good advice for everyone else as well:

When students read or hear the out-of-context quotes from
such a book [That Their Words May be Used Against Them
from the Institute for Creation Research], they quite often
think that evolution must be a theory in crisis within the
scientific community. If creationist students suddenly quote
respected evolutionary scientists and expect science instructors
to respond instantly (without even knowing the context of the quotes)
we recommend the following two actions: (1) instructors should explain
to the students that they are cognizant of the scientists being
quoted (if they are) and that the evidence compels these scientists
to conclude that evolution is an accurate scientific theory, and
(2) instructors request that the students bring in the original
sources of the quotes of the quotes so that they can read in
context. Having the original source (not the quote book) will
allow instructors to illustrate to students that there is an entire
book or article surrounding the one quote and that the publication
is not challenging the occurrence of evolution. The goal of this
exercise is not for students to find evolution compelling simply
because experts find the data compelling; they should examine
the evidence and come to their own conclusions. However, when
students quote these experts, they need to understand clearly
the positions of the people they quoting and the contextual
meaning of the quotes [footnote omitted].

If you are a creationist who rejects evolution then before you use
such quotes, do look them up in the original.
If you a supporter of evolution and find
evolution deniers giving you quotations, demand that they personally
look up their quotes in the original. And always be wary any
quote that seems "too good" to be true. If the quote makes
you ask "how could this person accept evolution?" it is probably
best to assume their is something wrong with the quotation until
concrete evidence provided and independent verification is done.
That is not dogma, but the voice of experience. Antievolutionists
have "cried wolf" far too many times.

To sum up, when evolution deniers provide quotations many
questions need to be asked including:

Is the quote itself accurate?

Do the preceding and following passages change the meaning of the quote?

Does the creationist use the key terms in the same way as the quoted person?

What is the quoted person's actual opinion on the point in question?

Who was the quoted person addressing?

Is the quote out-of-date?

Who is the quoted person?

Is the quoted person a relevant authority to the issue at hand?

What do other relevant authorities think?

Is the quote from a popular source or from the primary peer-reviewed
literature?

Is the quoted person actually correct?

If a verifiable reference is not provided then consider the quote to be
hearsay. Also remember that it very easy to find statements by
qualified statements strongly supporting evolution and/or objecting
to how they have been quoted by evolution deniers.
This ends the essay portion of this document. The next
section gives online sources for the reader to continue exploring
this issue.

Online resources documenting antievolutionist misquotations

The
Fossil Hominid FAQ
of The Talk.Origins Archive has several pages on creationist
misquotations on human evolution:

Acknowledgements

Many people provided advice or were otherwise helpful in the
making of this resource. Of course, any errors or assaults
on the English language are solely the responsibility of the
author. Any opinions expressed in this document are that of the author and
not of any other person or organization unless explicitly
stated. A very partial list of helpful persons includes
Cathy Ball, Coragyps, Pete Dunkelberg, Adam Marczyk, Morpho,
The Sapient, John Solum, Nic Tamzek,
Douglas Theobald, theyeti, and Ed Vinson.
This document is
dedicated to all those who have bothered to look up
what the evolution deniers have quoted and published or posted
the results.